Falsecypress Soft Serve

* Common name: Falsecypress Soft Serve

* Botanical name: Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Dow Whiting’

* What it is: There’s ample demand in the landscape for a compact, slow-growing, upright evergreen, but the main choice for a long time has been the bug-prone dwarf Alberta spruce.

   Soft Serve is a recent arrival that grows at a similar rate and to a similar size and shape as dwarf Albertas but in a much more bug-resistant package. Its needles are soft and medium green, although there’s also a new (and not as readily available) gold-needled version.

   This variety also is a good alternative to bigger and fast-growing arborvitae when used as a screening plant… and unlike our native eastern arborvitae, isn’t a favorite target of deer.

* Size: Soft Serve plants grow slowly to eight to 10 feet tall and five to six feet wide in 15-20 years.

* Where to use: These make excellent evergreen specimens for a house corner, flanking doorways or arbors, or between windows where an upright plant makes sense. They also make mid-size, year-round screen plantings when planted four to five feet apart.

   Full sun is best, but Soft Serve also does well in part shade, such as sites that get full morning sun and then afternoon shade.

   The species is also salt-tolerant, meaning it does better than many other plants when planted along roads and driveways where salty ice-melter throw from winter plowing can create harmful sodium buildup in the soil.

* Care: Keep damp the first season, then water is needed only in extended hot, dry spells.

   Scatter an acidifying organic granular fertilizer formulated for evergreens around the base of the plant each March.

   Pruning isn’t needed unless plants outgrow the allotted space. However, a light shearing each spring helps encourage denser, full growth.

* Great partner: Looks good fronted or interspersed with any red- or gold-blooming perennial, such as daylilies, mums, black-eyed susans, coreopsis, and gaillardia. Golden creeping sedum ‘Angelina’ is a colorful groundcover underneath. Interplant with golden daffodils for early-spring color.